He catches my wrist.
I look up at him.
"This is a mistake. I should have known better."
And then my heart breaks all over again.
This hurts.
That's the only thought in my head as I climb out of the jacuzzi and reach for my towel, my hands moving on autopilot while the rest of me stays stuck somewhere in the water with his forehead pressed against mine and his breathing ragged and the word mistake hanging in the air between us like smoke that won't clear.
A mistake.
A mistake. That's what I am to him. That's what all of it was. The touching, the kissing, his hands, his mouth on my neck, all of it just a mistake he made and immediately regretted.
Four years of distance, four years of careful nothing, and the moment he finally stops fighting it, the moment he finally lets himself have one single thing he wants, he decides it's a mistake before I've even caught my breath.
I wrap the towel around myself and don't look at him because if I look at him right now I don't know what he'll see on my face and I've given him enough. I've given him everything and he handed it back like it cost him nothing, like I cost him nothing, like the last minutes in that water was something that happened to him rather than something he chose.
Don't cry. You will absolutely not cry over this. You are Isabella Romano and you do not cry over men who don't deserve your tears.
I walk inside without saying a word.
The cabin is dim, late afternoon starting to bleed into early evening while we were outside, shadows collecting in the corners of the living room and the kitchen beyond. I'm dripping on the hardwood floors, my hair soaking into the towel, and all I want is to get upstairs and close a door and sit alone with this feeling somewhere no one can see it.
I'm halfway across the living room when I stop.
Something in the air.
What is that.
I don't know what triggers it exactly, some shift in the quality of the silence, the way the shadows in the room feel occupied rather than empty. My body registers it before my brain catches up, every hair on my arms rising, a cold alertness moving through me that has nothing to do with the evening temperature.
Someone is here. Someone is in this room or was just in this room and we were outside and the door was unlocked and oh God oh God oh God?—
"Enzo."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ibarely say it. Just his name in the dim room, barely above a breath.
He's already inside behind me, already reading the same thing in the air that I am because I feel him go completely still and then I hear the quiet sound of him crossing to the kitchen counter where he left his gun.
"Get behind the couch." Low and completely level. Not a question.
I move without arguing, dropping low, my back pressing against the far side of the couch, the towel gripped in both hands. I hear him cross the room with silently, like he does when he's working.
The cabin is quiet except for water dripping steadily from my hair onto the floor.
Please don't let it be Declan's men. Please don't let it be Killian.
I count the seconds. Three. Five. Eight. Ten.
Then a knock at the door.
Not frantic. Not urgent. Not the knock of someone frightened or running. Three slow deliberate knocks with the particular rhythm of a man who expects to be answered and is merely giving whoever's inside the courtesy of a moment to do it.
My stomach drops to somewhere around the floor.
